Summer days

Things seem to be rather quiet in the garden at the moment.  Runner and French beans are maturing and being harvested.  Grass edges have been neatly trimmed. Watering is still a big concern.

All hands to the tap!

The sunflowers are looking their best now.

Bees love sunflowers

Borage is a herb that self seeds so readily that we can have two crops in the same summer. Young leaves can be added to salads, where the flowers also look wonderful.  Borage is said to be the herb that was given to young Roman soldiers, for courage and comfort.  Gerard's Herbal (1597) states that the flowers "drive away sorrow, and increase the joy of the minde."

Borage - herb of courage.

Ladybirds, blackfly and bees.....and bean poles.

Insect life was particularly noticeable this week in the garden.  Ladybirds feasted on blackfly, so helping our plants to survive.

Ladybird and blackfly on borage

More ladybirds on swiss chard

 Bees were everywhere, enjoying the echiums, borage and phacelia, and pollinating our veg as well.

Spot the bees on phacelia

Some of the phacelia has finished flowering, and is being removed to make room for sweetcorn.

Making a space for sweetcorn.

We have experienced some irritating vandalism since last week's efforts with the bean poles - one of the wigwams was pulled up and left lying near the plot. So we hope we have fixed them in even more firmly this time around.

We've been here before!

Wisteria time

The wisterias on the pergolas that line two sides of the Annecy Garden are coming into flower, they're beginning to look very pretty.

Wisterias in flower on the pergola, with mustard 'Red Frills' flowering in the foreground

A number of other plants are now in flower, mainly annuals that have survived the winter:

Self-sown violas, seed of which survived in the soil from 3 years ago when the beds were last planted with flowers, before being turfed over

Borage, Borago officinalis, there are also many seedlings of this appearing & these should flower through the summer. Not only are the flowers pretty, but also attractive to bees. You can eat the leaves, depends how much you enjoy chomping on bristles

The rocket (Eruca sativa) which we sowed & planted in the autumn is now flowering, we enjoyed a tasty salad of the leaves which are now particularly luxuriant & scarcely damaged by flea-beetles which make innumerable pock marks in spring-sown rocket (& also other brassicas)

The red & green salad bowl lettuces, planted out a month or so ago will soon be ready for harvesting:

The leaves on bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus) are now also looking lovely. They're edible. But really not that nice to eat. Still, maybe if you had them in a bowl of mixed salad leaves you might not be able to taste them, which'd be best.

Rumex sanguineus, looks prettier than it tastes